May 31st, 2016 brings us 86-days away from the National Park Service Centennial. In this edition of the #CentennialCountdown we go back 86-years to 1930 and the creation of Carlsbad Caverns National Park.

The cowboy, Jim White, who discovered the cave noticed it after seeing what he thought was a plume of smoke coming out of the ground. He went to inspect what he thought would be a fire and found a mass of bats flying out of the cave. He was quote as saying "any hole in the ground which could house such a gigantic army of bats must be a whale of a big cave."